Jolla sails into the smartphone seas with new OS

The future of smartphones has just gotten a tad more interesting with the emergence of a brand new handset and its even newer operating system - the Sailfish-running Jolla.

You might find that it looks oddly familiar; the team behind Jolla used to work for Finnish phone giant, Nokia. The operating system was known as MeeGo back in the day, but was scrapped in favour of developing the Windows Phone system we know today. Wrong move? Only time will tell.

Fronted in a 4.5in IPS qHD display with a 2MP front-facing camera and 8MP shooter on the other side, the 1.4GHz quad-cored Jolla comes with 16GB of internal storage, and a microSD slot for the option of storage expansion. Although not revolutionary - that screen is particularly low-res by today's standards - its specs put it in decent stead with the rest of the mid-range smartphones available today.

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Fish and Finns

What sets Jolla apart is its operating system - Sailfish.

While the platform is not an entirely new species of phone smarts (it recognises the usual screen-stroking motions), it attempts to differentiate itself by swimming upstream.

Users can check on updates in the Events view by swiping upwards, or pull and release to start up the camera via its Pulley menu. It might sound like driving on the opposite side of the road for now, but it should come naturally to adept tech adopters quickly enough.

What’s more critical is that Sailfish allows users access to both Android and native Sailfish apps, leaving even the most insatiable of appetites spoilt for choice. With the chance of more developers getting on board due to its open-sourced nature, the app-mosphere will be heating up, and hopefully, resulting in some choice picks for us.

The Jolla is priced at €399 (RM1750) a pop in Finland, which is on the high side compared to the likes of the Google Nexus 5. Verdict on its Asian availability is yet to be out, but we’ve got our fingers crossed it'll be sailing into our part of the world sometime soon.